The Justice Secretary of the Republic of the Philippines made a resolution over the weekend telling his state prosecutors to drop the charges against Zaldy “Puti” Ampatuan and Mayor Akmad “Tato” Ampatuan Sr. in connection the Maguindanao Massacre for lack of evidence.  The big problem is that Justice Secretary Agra made the decision without consulting the very people who are handling the case, believed on an alibi instead of the statements of a “star witness” and arrogantly acted like a courtroom judge and rendered the decision of who is innocent and who is guilty on the most gruesome killings of journalists and political opponents in the Philippines.

Lady Justice may have been forced to peek from her eye cover to see who this very confident cabinet secretary is.

And it seems that Sec. Agra is so confident that he may even walk on burning charcoals just to prove that he is right and his decision came from the holy mountains and written on stone tablets.

So many people and legal experts had already seen this coming; a whitewash if not the filing of weaker cases against the Ampatuans; staunch allies of the cutest president Gloria Arroyo who delivered the votes for her and her senatoriables in Maguinadanao.

Sec. Alberto Agra said that he has bought the alibi presented by the two Ampatuans specifically Zaldy Ampatuan who was in Davao during the massacre.

If I may, Gloria Arroyo by the way was not present in Maguindanao when cheating during the 2004 elections happened; Osama Bin Laden was not piloting the planes during the 9-11 attacks when they destroyed the World Trade and kill thousands; and Adolf Hitler was hiding on his bunker in Berlin when Gestapo exterminated millions of Jews during the last days of the war as part of their retaliatory actions. As what Atty. Harry Roque said, an alibi is the weakest defense, but this administration has been the epitome of making the craziest alibis; and that they are patronizing their own.

Now, the mouthpiece of the Palace who is by the way an American citizen, said that her cute boss should be sparred from this issue as she has totally nothing to do with the decision.  Come again?  Cabinet secretaries are alter-egos of the President if not alter-over-inflated egos of the President and whatever her secretaries do they reflect the very policies of her administration.  Well, that is again one crazy alibi from the windmill of lies which they think we would easily buy.

The biggest problem in the world today is when intelligent people act like fools.

I will not wonder if soon the murder and the weaker rebellion cases against the Ampatuans will just end up with a jaywalking violation.  And we know very well that jaywalkers in the Philippines go unpunished especially when you’ve got one good alibi.

Share your thoughts and comment, unless you’ve got one good alibi.

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But the Mangudadatus, despite the loss of lives of family members and the mourning, continued the fight promising the people of Maguindanao of a true democracy to shine upon them when he gets elected while the Ampatuans face serious cases filed against them and public anger pouring like unending hailstorm.

Though it sounds like an end of a political regime that is marked by violence, abuse and corruption, the ushering of the Mangudadatus on the mainstream political arena of the province of Maguindanao still casts serious doubts among those who see nothing but a change of name on political leadership.

On the recent news and study of political clans listed with private armies, Maguindanao is said to have more than 40 of them including both the Ampatuans and Mangudadatus.  Although the Mangudadatus has a very small group of private armed men compared to the thousands that the Ampatuans has, it still tells us that they are not far from the very people that is now facing serious charges in court for multiply murder and rebellion.  The Mangudadatus are also occupying many government posts in Mindanao as is considered one of the powerful political clans or dynasties in Maguindanao.

We have seen for so many times in the past of how one family or political powerhouse went down due to abusive leadership when confronted by an emerging political personality, only to find out eventually that only the name of the leader has changed but the same old style of politics persisted.

I cannot exactly say if the fate of the province of Maguindanao will not change.  I don’t know if the Mangudadatus take the leadership of the province from the Ampatuans a real democratic society where justice, equality and freedom will truly prevail or it will still be the same old place where fear, poverty and injustice burden the people.  I wish that it will not be the chance for the Mangudadatus to strengthen their power and political clouts in the province but rather indeed an opportunity of giving back to their constituents what they truly deserve from their leaders and local government.

Either the Mangudadatus or another Ampatuan ally taking the seat of governance in Maguindanao, it is not as important though right now than the assurance of justice for all the 57 people, who has made the sacrifice in order for the nation to have a renewed consciousness and commitment against abusive and corrupt leadership marked with violence.

Are we going to see a recycled or re-branded kind of governance in Maguindanao with the Mangudadatus?  What do you think?

Image from Ryan Ericson Canlas

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Brutal, barbaric, and heinous. These were words used to describe the Maguindanao massacre that has claimed the lives of more than 50 people—the majority of them being political supporters, lawyers and media practitioners in the company of scions of a political clan.

Eyewitness reports from survivors have pointed to the perpetrators responsible for this gruesome mass execution, and while verification of these accounts has yet to be done, there is little doubt that at the core of this barbarism is a politics bereft of principle, a politics that has lost touch with the very foundations of human decency. What happened in Maguindanao was an animal act. The savage atrocities wreaked upon the victims and horrifyingly evident on their mutilated corpses beggars the imagination. This incident is a warning about the depths to which human beings can descend when they allow the lust for power, possessions and prestige to take over their lives.

“God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man sows, so shall he reap”(Gal 6:7). Let us not fool ourselves. The Maguindanao Massacre is not a mere election-related feud. It is a symptom of the moral bankruptcy, lack of accountability, and wanton disregard for human rights that has characterized the culture of the Arroyo administration since consolidating its power in the contested elections of 2004. Such trends, well-documented by various local and international human rights agencies and by no less than the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in 2007, have been tolerated for too long.

The Arroyo administration took a double tack, on the one hand, expressing indignation at “a most heinous crime” that constitutes a “supreme act of inhumanity that is a blight on our nation,’ while on the other hand, dragging its heels in pursuing the capture and detention of a political ally whose fortunes flourished under this administration’s patronage. We note that the administration’s invocation of the rule of law and call for the respect of due process, while appropriate in normal circumstances, sounds mightily suspect coming from an administration that is beholden to the political clan said to be behind this atrocity, an administration that has failed to successfully prosecute any of its allies and supporters for corruption, human rights violations, and other high crimes. Actions speak louder than words.. Why treat with kid gloves those who use their influence to silence their political opponents and disenfranchise citizens in elections? Why weren’t the alleged murderers at least immediately called in for questioning, if only to answer the charges of survivors or clarify the presence of the local government’s backhoe in the area of the mass grave?
Why was the chief suspect treated?

An additional source of discomfort is the clear dereliction of duty of the police and military in the province and region who were informed earlier about the prospect of a violent incident and decided to steer clear of deploying forces to prevent the lawless armed thugs of the political warlord from carrying out their sinister plan. While the military was quickly mobilized to avoid any possible retaliation of the aggrieved clan, the leadership of the Armed Forces at present (with a Defense Secretary that headed an Inter-agency Legal Action Group that prioritized cases of extra-judicial killings perpetrated by “enemies of the state,”) leaves much doubt as to its capacity to effectively defang armed political warlords.

We condemn the Maguindanao Massacre not only because of the brutal and barbaric murder of those who sought only to exercise their political rights, but more importantly because it unravels in a most telling way, the age-old problem of a feeble state that has allowed private armed groups to lord it over territories in exchange for propping up the national leadership and its cohorts at the local and national levels. Whatever blight we now face does not fall simply on the hands of the alleged perpetrators of the Maguindanao Massacre. The blood that flowed in Maguindanao stains the hands of the President who ultimately commands the forces of political control and coercion in this country. We demand that justice be done with all transparency and in the quickest possible time.

We call on Lasallians and all Filipinos to express our indignation at the moral bankruptcy that has led to this paroxysm of violence. If we are not to be complicit in this abomination against humanity, we must act now and demand that this administration be held accountable for the quality of its stewardship and for its continuing debasement of the political
system.

Br. Edmundo Fernandez FSC
Brother Visitor

Br. Felipe Belleza FSC
District Council Member

Br. Narciso Erguiza Jr. FSC
District Council Member

Br. Dennis Magbanua FSC
District Council Member

Br. Victor Franco FSC
Auxilliary Visitor

Br. Armin Luistro FSC
District Council Member

Br. Ray Suplido FSC
District Council Member

Br. Jose Mari Jimenez FSC
District Council Member

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I have been personally mourning since Monday. The Maguindanao massacre is for me so unimaginable; a barbaric and demonic act of violence that one sunny day happened to our nation, that unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, is not plunged into a daily bloodbath because of war.

Has life has been so cheap for the suspected Ampatuans, local demigods of Maguindanao that ordinary people; women, a life in a womb of a mother, journalists who are just doing their jobs of telling the truth as it happens, and those who were caught at the wrong place and the wrong time, could easily be ended in unparalleled brutality and shameless display of political and material arrogance?

 

Brutality of the Maguindanao Massacre

Women were raped; victims were tortured and shot at close range, shattering their skulls; the wife of Ishmael Mangudadatu was brutally killed by piercing her eyes, stabbing her body and shooting her sex organ; some where mutilated; buried in a empty pit together with cars that were smashed by an excavator owned by the provincial government; while other victims’ bodies were ran over by vehicles. The perpetrators easily beats the Abu Sayaff in notoriety.

Where in the world could a heinous crime on such a large scale of deaths and brutality happen in just a day? The scene of mutilated and tortured bodies of helpless victims is comparable to the tortures perpetrated by the Japanese and Nazi forces during the World War II. But for heaven’s sake, we are not even into war! Were the perpetrators and masterminds high on drugs or simply the embodiment of the gods and its minions coming from the darkest corner of the netherworld?

 

Maguindanao Massacre: Another Guinness Record for the Philippines

Today, death toll from the mass murder at Maguindanao stands at 57. Another feat for the Philippines: the most number of journalists killed in a single day at a single incident, and at least 18 journalists were killed at the massacre. This is for the statistics aside from always topping corruption rankings worldwide.

To this, our nation automatically became the “most dangerous place for journalists in the planet” even beating Iraq. And on the administration of Gloria Arroyo, the killing of journalists is one of the greatest highlight of her corrupted governance with 74 deaths and most of these unresolved.

Anyone so damn proud of these figures should go to hell.

 

The Suspected Ampatuans: DEMONS

So many things have been said already about this notorious local war lords: from being the saving grace of Gloria Arroyo during the 2004 elections delivering the goods for her and Sen. Zubiri; maintaining private armies which are by the way funded by taxpayers’ money (through GMA‘s EO 546 issued on July 2006); notoriety of their governance and corruption in Maguindanao with all their big mansions, vast holdings, convoys of luxury cars, public arrogance and gazillions of bodyguards clad in military uniforms and high-powered fire arms while Maguindanao stands as the 3rd poorest province in the country; and a clout of the political dynasty to so many government positions in the region of Mindanao. (read here for more about the Ampatuans)

But the best definition/description to the Ampatuans whose hands are full of blood from the lives of 57 innocent people that we all mourn for: DEMONS!

 

Double Standard Justice System Under GMA

But what is more glaring in the Maguindanao Massacre is the disturbing fact that the administration handled the case in a very extraordinary way as if so helpless and fearsome of the murderers’ wrath.

The Palace sent an envoy to the murderer’s lair early Tuesday to talk to them diplomatically and assure them that due process and all the nonsense stuffs will run their course and they should cooperate. For heaven’s sake! Where in the world will you see that the President sends an envoy to tell the murderers and blood-thirsty suspects from the war lord’s clan that everything is fine and that due diligence is being observed and at that due process is assured to them. WTF! No one was ever arrested; only today after 4 days when the massacre happened that someone was surrendered.

I could easily remember broadcaster Ted Failon’s case. When her wife committed suicide, police barraged into his home arresting him and everyone that they could find without even any solid evidence against these suspected individuals; sending them to jail for a couple of days detailing them as suspects.

When the son of an undersecretary of the Palace was shot dead due to a traffic altercation, police forces immediately mobilized to search the houses where the suspect is thought to have been hiding and were resolute to get him and send him to jail.

When an ordinary man is killed by gangsters or a alcoholic freak in a neighborhood; policemen automatically swoop down like hungry vultures to take on the alleged suspects and bring them to jail.

But when a powerful ally of the President and a very powerful political clan she is greatly indebted to is suspected and pointed out by some witnesses to have killed 57 people brutally; the President sends an envoy to assure murderers of due process and equal protection of the law and due diligence from authorities with no one being arrested, only until the suspected mastermind Datu Unsay Andal Ampatuan Jr. surrendered himself to authorities.

As if rendering the public inutile of the clear manifestation of the government in not only harboring a criminal, a murderer, but also circumventing the law to appease an ally.

That is justice in a country ruled by a corrupt and morally bankrupt government. The wheel of justice depends on who is on the steering wheel and who loads the gas full tank.

 

Governance of Evil Breeds Evil

Romulo Neri got it right: GMA is evil. And with an evil President forming, feeding, condoning, funding and protecting her evil broods well-positioned in all parts of the country, we are sure to see evil deeds and unimaginable crimes happening day in and day out.

Cito Beltran said it right too: the Ampatuans are GMA’s lapdogs. And when a dog bites a neighbor, its owner is the one who is being held accountable by the victim and its family. Unfortunately, GMA who is the patron of the wild dogs in this case is very much afraid that her dogs might bite her too.

Atrocities will continue to happen. Unimaginable acts against humanity will continue to be reported. And the rape of Lady Justice will perpetuate as long as an evil leader is seated on a highest position on the land breeding more evils on localities and condoning existing evils to plague our society and our poverty.

The National Day of Mourning issued by the Palace should be aptly be called a National Day of Adding Insult to Injury. Nothing more hurts than showing to the public how much the President loves a suspected murderer and turning a blind eye to all the killings of journalists, activists and unforced disappearances on those who fight for truth and justice for the longest time now.

“I wanted these Ampatuans to be beheaded“ I shouted out as a cry for justice bordering on a knee-jerk reaction (but I am pretty sure, many of you are thinking the same). But Cocoy hastily reminded me “No no no beheading! That will be too humane! They should be in pain for the rest of their natural life!”

But I fear sooner or later this suspected Ampatuan when after conviction will be back to his former glory if ever GMA or the allies of the clan grab the leadership; legally or illegally. It is still fresh in my memory how GMA took out of jail and pardoned convicted criminals like Tehankee and Jalosjos. They are her lapdogs, but she is damn scared they might bite her.

 

Image from Times Online

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